re: #371 Ming

I’ve heard about her books for a long time. Looking on amazon.com, I see a book named “Infidel”, another named “Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations”, another named “The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam”, etc. I’ve always been curious to read more about her.

I’ve read about her, on and off, for years, and she always struck me as very interesting and reasonable.

When you ask “Precisely which part(s) about what she says regarding those things do you suppose people object to?”, well, I have exactly the same question. I was surprised yesterday to read about her and Brandeis.

It seems to me that she has a valuable perspective on Islam, especially in regard to feminism, and my question is: what about her is so bad that Brandeis would cancel her speech?

Did you even read what Randall wrote in his post, where this discussion started? Did you read the NY Times article he linked to? Both made it pretty clear what’s “so bad” about her.

If at this point you still can’t figure out what makes much of what she says unacceptable, try reading some of the things she says, but replace the word Muslim with Jew or Black, then replace the word Islam with Judaism or Christianity and see if you still find it acceptable.

Better yet, replace it with whatever ethnic group you belong to an whatever religion (or unbelief) you follow—e.g. if you’re an Asian atheist then use those words to replace Muslim and Islam. If you still think she sounds “reasonable” after that, then I guess we have wildly differing definitions of that word.

As for her perspective, it is a personal perspective based on her personal experiences—experiences which have clearly (and understandably) deeply scarred her psychologically.

In terms of education, she has an MSc in political science and (according to Wikipedia) took a one-year introductory course in social work. I don’t see either one of those as making her especially qualified to speak on matters related to Islam or feminism. She made it clear in her Reason interview that she would like to see MY religious freedoms as an American Muslim woman revoked—that’s her brand of “feminism” and there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to be on board with it or consider it “reasonable”.